~ a quest

Category Archives: A Quest

Politics is an unusual profession which was never met to exist. The Founding Fathers saw political service as something people did for a term or two before returning to whatever profession they had left when they went into office.

However, we do have career politicians. These elected officials struggle with truth to remain in office. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying politicians are all liars and cheats. What I am saying is career politicians have an ability to skew truths to meet their need to be re-elected.

Here is an example: Republican (and I am not accusing Republicans only) politicians, along with conservative media outlets, have been telling us that electing Democrats will be the end of The Second Amendment. No matter where you stand on the gun safety debate you must begin with the truth of the matter concerning The Second Amendment, or any Amendment. If you allow the political speak of career politicians to sway you without doing your research, you cannot vote intelligently. If you do not sift through the political speak bombarding us incessantly you will debate without the facts.

Here is the truth. No one person or political party can ‘take away’ an amendment. If a Quaker were elected President she would not be able to take away The Second Amendment. It cannot happen.

Here is how the two-part amendment process works as stated in Article 5 of our constitution.

Step 1: Two-thirds of both houses of Congress pass a proposed constitutional amendment. This sends the proposed amendment to the states for ratification.

Step 2: Three-fourths of the states (38 states) ratify the proposed amendment, either by their legislatures or special ratifying conventions.

Notice that the President is absent from the process of amending the constitution entirely. No President can undo any amendment, ever! That is the truth. Really!

Only one time in our history has an amendment be removed. The 21st Amendment undid the 18th Amendment which banded the sale and manufacturing of alcohol.Here is a photo of three of the pastors in our family enjoying the ‘fruits’ of the 21st Amendment.

The Constitution has only been amended 27 times since the original document was signed. The truth is no one or no political party is going to take away any amendment. The process of amending the Constitution is difficult enough to make it impossible for a minority of people to change it. But, the amending process is easy enough for a super majority of the population to change the document.

Career politicians will say what they must to get re-elected. Do not take what they say at face value. Do some research. Find the facts. Don’t simply listen to your niece or nephew. Know the truth. Be knowledgeable.

In my continuing quest to visit all the Major League baseball stadiums I flew up to Milwaukee for a Pirates and Brewers contest. Of course, Milwaukee is known as ‘Brew City’ so I visited The Pabst Brewery museum. You don’t have to be a beer drinker to enjoy this very intimate and informative tour. However, the glass of beer that comes with the tour is loads of fun if you are a beer drinker. The city is very serious about their nickname. The new Bucks (NBA) stadium is even shaped like a beer barrel. Really!

Five of us joined our guide, Scott, on the tour. The other four folks were in town to celebrate a birthday. Check this out; every year on the wife/mother’s birthday this family visits a different Major League stadium in her quest to experience them all. What are the chances that we would share a brewery tour together? The only down side was that they were wearing Brewer jerseys instead of a Pirate jersey like mine. We had an enjoyable time being baseball and beer fans.

The Cliff Notes on the tour look like this. In 1844 a German immigrant named, Jacob Best founded Empire Brewery on Chestnut Street Hill in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company produced 300 barrels of beer the first twelve months of operation then changed the name to Best and Company. You might have heard of the other three ‘Brew City’ big four breweries; Miller, Schlitz and Blatz. I bet you didn’t know that Best was the other one of the big four. You probably don’t know that because Best became Pabst.

One of Jacob’s daughters was named Maria. When she was seventeen her father took her along on a trip to Sheboygan aboard a ferry captained by Frederick Pabst. Legend has it, according to Scott, that Maria nearly fell off the gang way to the ship. Captain Pabst caught her hand and saved her from falling into the water. Apparently, that was all Maria needed to take Frederick’s hand in marriage.

Jacob tried to entice Frederick to come work at the brewery, but the captain stayed at sea until he ran a boat aground in a storm to save the passengers. With the insurance settlement from the wreck Frederick had enough money to purchase half of the brewery. Meanwhile another of Jacob’s daughters, Lisette married Emil Schandein who purchased the other half of the enterprise.

In 1889 The company name was changed to Pabst Brewing Company. That makes sense to me because Schandein Brewery doesn’t have the same kind of ring, does it?

Many of the brewery buildings have been re-purposed since the brewery ceased production on site.

One more note on this story. Jacob’s son, Charles left Best and Company early on to establishing the Plank Road Brewery and shortly after in 1854 sold it to another German immigrant named Frederick Miller for $2,300. Yes, this was the beginning of Miller Brewing Company.

Miller Brewing Company owns the naming rights to the baseball stadium. Oh, by the way you can see the Miller Brewery from the stadium. You can see the stadium from almost everywhere in Milwaukee.

This trip originally was going to be an adventure for My Jane and Me. Due to a serious illness in her family My Jane was diverted to Pennsylvania as a caregiver. So, I had an extra ticket behind home plate on the second level (nice sits). I positioned myself on a bench near the ticket booth and asked individuals as they passed if they needed a ticket. One lady who didn’t need a ticket started talking baseball with me. During our conversation a guy sat down beside me and eventually joined the conversation. The three of us talked a long time (I was at the stadium real early.) Suddenly, the guy says something about the Bob Uecker window opening and he must go purchase his ticket. “I have an extra ticket.” I interjected. “Do you want it?” I showed him the ticket and our friendship blossomed. Alan, a retired school teacher became my tour guide and we went everywhere we could in that place. Alan explained that he had been waiting for the one-dollar ticket window to open while we were talking. The one-dollar tickets are known as Bob Uecker tickets and the seats are in an obstructed view section of the stadium. “Uke” is a long-time announcer of Brewer games and you might remember him from the Miller Lite commercial in which he states, “Oh, I must be in the front row.” He doesn’t end up in the front row. (the commercial is still on youtube.) The evening was one of those great baseball moments that happen so often at the ball park.

Miller Park is the twentieth stadium I have visited on this quest. Unfortunately, the quest began in the seventies and six of the stadiums visited have been torn down. So, officially I have visited fourteen of the thirty ‘living’ major league baseball stadiums.

In our backyard is a 19,000-acre lake named Tohopekaliga (we will gather together). The lake is known to the locals as Lake Toho and is located southeast of Kissimmee. At a maximum depth of 10 feet the lakes 42-mile circumference makes it the largest lake in Osceola County. Just by chance I pay my water bill each month to a company named Toho (I guess Tohopekaliga didn’t fit on the paperwork).

The name Kissimmee originated between the 1750s and 1850s when soldiers were pursuing Seminoles along the shore of Lake Tohopekaliga and commenced to massacre the Indians when a brave Seminole woman began screaming “Kish-a-me. No kill. Kish-a-me. No kill!” Miraculously, the soldiers did heed to her offer and this lady sacrificed herself to save the remaining Seminoles who escaped to the wild lands along the shores of what is now known as “kish-a-me or Kissimmee River.

Our neighbors, Joel and Rosalia joined me on an air boat adventure to Lake Toho on a beautiful Friday. We picked Boggy Creek Air Adventures located less than half an hour south of us for our virgin air boat ride.

Capt Ryan greeted us and invited us to board the air boat to begin our hour-long adventure. Ryan is a soft-spoken knowledgeable young man who knows his way around Lake Toho after five years’ experience driving air boats.

Our collection of passengers included folks from New Hampshire, Utah and The Netherlands. Ryan pointed out wildlife to us and nudged us as close to gators as the reptiles would allow. The wildlife was plentiful, and Ryan gave us plenty of opportunity to take pictures. Did you know the Great Heron loves baby alligator? When we weren’t looking at wildlife the speed addicts were treated to an open throttle run across glass smooth waters.

We ended our adventure in the Boggy Creek restaurant and gift shop where our appetizer was some very good gator bites.

Our purpose in life, as I understand it, is to become like The Eternal God, as seen in Jesus Christ. ‘Becoming’ is a process that requires continual attention to necessary improvements in ourselves and society. Making improvements means changing something because improving is impossible by staying the same.

Back in another life time I sat through an interview with a church search committee. Search interviews are a piece of the church’s process for discerning who might be a viable candidate as pastor. These interviews also are the pastor’s opportunity to discern if this church is a good match for the pastor. I can write about the failings of this system for days. But, this blog is about relentless change not system break downs. During the conversation at one search committee meeting a long-time church pillar blurted out, “I don’t believe in change.” I guess this gal still saw herself as a new-born baby in her mother’s arms. She certainly didn’t see a need to become like The Eternal God.

Believe in it or not change is relentlessly affecting us. David Bowie addresses this relentless change when he sings,

“Ch-ch-changes

There’s gonna have to be a different man

Time may change me

But I can’t trace time.”

A portion of our country, mostly white men from my observation, are doing their best to stop change. These folks feel they are losing something as change, changes their perceived world. Like the church pillar above these folks do not grasp the need to improve how we relate to each other on this planet.

Jimmy Carter writes in his book, Faith, A Journey for All, ‘The basic moral codes that shape and control our lives are the results of the laws of evolution; …Primarily because of the tools and weapons that ensured our dominance, our physical development of strength and agility is no longer important in competition with other animals for survival. This means that the course of ascending evolution will be shaped by whether we learn to cooperate in doing what is good for each other instead of how we can prevail over others in combat.’

In other words, the continued evolution and survival of our species depends on our ability to adapt to the current necessity for cooperation from the past necessity to dominate. It is essential for our survival as humanity to heed the words of Peter, Paul and Mary who sang,

‘Well, I’ve got a hammer

And I’ve got a bell

And I’ve got a song to sing

All over this land

It’s the hammer of justice

It’s the bell of freedom

It’s a song about love between

My brothers and my sisters

All over this land’

The Byrds sang, ‘To everything there is a season.’ (a quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament) The time is now for our season of growing love and cooperation with our brothers and sisters as we become more like the Eternal God who is love.

Who are my brothers and sisters, you ask? Really? Jesus assures us that everyone walking on this planet is our brother and sister. (Remember the Good Samaritan parable?) So, it is our season to reach out a hand full of love and compassion instead of a hand closed in a fist.

The Beatles beg us to find peace by accepting each other as we are when they sang,

‘And when all the broken-hearted people

Living in the world agree

There will be an answer, let it be’

The world has been changing since the world began. As Bob Dylan says, ‘There is nothing so stable as change.’

You say, I don’t believe we have changed. Really? Did you know that in 1800 the average life expectancy around the world was 30 years old? In 1973 the average life expectancy around the world was 60 years old. Today our life expectancy average is 72 years old. Something has been changing during the last 200 years.

Change is constant. If we choose this season in time to embrace the changes we will ascend in our evolution as human beings to become more like God’s vision for the creation formed in love. If we choose to resist the changes we will miss the opportunity to become more like The Eternal God, as seen in Jesus Christ.

Our good friends, going on forty years, stopped by on their way north for the summer, yesterday. Sterling and Mary Jane bonded with My Jane and I when I was pastor of a little church in East Berlin, PA in the seventies and eighties. We are now retired couples who worked hard at keeping in touch through the years of our military adventure. Sterling and Mary Jane winter in Ft. Myers so it makes sense that they stopped on their way back to Pennsylvania.

During their visit we talked about grandchildren, of course. Isn’t that what grandparents do? The one theme that stands out in those discussions is that grandparents need to be younger to keep up with the grandchildren. Sterling shared how hard it was to play catch with a grandson who consistently throws the ball two feet short of the target. Seventy-year-olds just do not squat like they did when their knees were thirty!

My Jane and I love having our three visit us, but a day and a half is required for our bodies to refuel. Unfortunately, there is no way to transfer a little of their energy to us during the visits. So much goes on when the three of ours are with us. We want to soak it all in and hold the memories tightly. So, I am not complaining. I am just making a statement of fact that old folks cannot keep up with young ones.

During the last visit I was ‘resting’ in the living room when the one year old came up to me looking at me with her big brown eyes and hands me an electrical outlet child safety cover. There is no way I am going to keep a step ahead of that one.

I didn’t understand the statement other grandparents made before I became one that goes something like this, “We are glad to see them come and glad to see them leave.” I have discovered the statement is not about a dislike of their grandchildren. The statement addresses the physical limitation that come with the aging process. Sterling would say it is part of the condition he calls “A.M.” which stands for Advanced Maturity. So, after the grandchildren leave , My Jane and I sink wearily into a chair with an adult beverage to remember and laugh about the joys of the visit. Then we fall asleep.

In some ‘Christian’ circles folks are comparing The President to King David of the Old Testament. Really! The story line for these folks is that God chose David and The President who are two similar leader types.

Let’s do a little comparison and try to establish if this theory holds up under some scrutiny.

First, the process of being chosen:

God sent the preacher, Samuel, to anoint David the next king of Israel. In other words, God was directly involved in the choosing of David. This is not the case with The President. He was elected by the human institution called The Electoral College. This same Electoral College, often along with the popular vote of the citizens, has elected all our Presidents.

If the claim is that God works through the Electoral College to choose our Presidents, then all our Presidents have been chosen by God and as such should have been treated as God’s chosen. That hasn’t been the reality of our treatment of presidents, in my experience.

Second, is the rationale that this must be God’s choosing because The President and King David were both flawed human beings. Really! That would be true if anyone of us was chosen to be King/President because all of us are flawed. The apostle Paul makes this point clearly in a letter to the Romans when he writes, ‘As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one.’ Being a flawed human does not make anyone stand out in the choosing process.

Third, the character traits of the two men:

David was a shepherd when God chose him. He was poor and unknown except to his family. The President is, well, a television celebrity, not poor and certainly not engaged in menial labor.

David was loyal to his King (Saul). David had two opportunities to kill Saul and would not because Saul was the King of the people. Not one time did David go against his King. David never accused Saul of not being a citizen or publicly second guessed the King’s decisions. Do I need to comment on The President and his assaults on his Presidents?

Spiritually, David had a personal relationship with his God. The writings about David share many conversations he had with God. David was a major contributor of praise songs to and about God, many of which may be found in the book of Psalms. For David God was constantly in the picture. The President’s spirituality is pretty much unknown. I do get a hint of his religious understanding through The President’s spiritual adviser, Paula White. This woman preaches that if folks send her their money they will become wealthy. She preaches this in the name of Jesus, an itinerant preacher with no home or money who preached, “It is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.”

David responded to his nation’s call before he was old enough to join the army. He turned the tide in a stalemated battle as a teenager. In the years following he became a great warrior as the song writers of the day sang, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” The President responded to his country’s call with bone spurs.

Fourth, The Bathsheba and Stormy Daniels things. Both men had one-night stands with women outside their marriage. David repented of his sin, wearing scratchy cloth, covering himself with dirt, fasting and pleading for God’s forgiveness. David also married the girl. The President simultaneously denies the affair happened while his lawyer pays the girl hush money. Oh, and about that repentance thing; the only statement on asking forgiveness I can find from The President is the time he was asked if he’d ever asked God for forgiveness. “I am not sure I have, I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so,” he said. “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

I don’t bring God into that picture? Really! Isn’t God already in the picture? Isn’t God the creator of the picture?

I really fail to see any similarity in these two men or any evidence to support God’s involvement in the election of The President. I know God can do anything God wants to do but don’t put this one on God.

Pinellas County seceded from Hillsborough County on January 1, 1912 and the county beaches, like the sirens of Odysseus lured thousands of people to the Gulf Coast just south of Tampa. Baseball teams were also lured to the white sand beaches of The Gulf for Spring Training. The Blue Jays perch in Dunedin and the Phillies claim Clearwater as home.

My Jane and I made our ‘annual’ trek to Spring Training lured like Odysseus by the sounds of bats on balls and vendors hawking peanuts, beer and water. This year we visited three parks as we followed our Pirates. We stopped in Dunedin to play the Blue Jays and Clearwater to eat Philly Cheese-steaks (We also watched the game with our friend Hulk Hogan.) Between those two games we ventured into Bradenton (Manatee County south of Pinellas County.) to see the Tigers. Spring Training is so much fun. In Dunedin we stopped to talk with the parking attendant who summers in Altoona (Home of the Curve, Pittsburgh’s AA minor league team.) We had much to share having lived just a few miles up route 99 in State College for five years. In Clearwater we sat next to a couple who had just managed to fly out of Philly between nor’easters (The row of Palm Trees behind the outfield is beautiful.) and our seat mates in Bradenton were vacationing from Canada. Most fans at Spring Training are glad to be sitting in the sun at a baseball game instead of shoveling snow. The atmosphere is very pleasant, and the games are almost secondary to being our in the sun.

If you haven’t been to Spring Training you need to know that you will not recognize most of the kids on the field. The dugouts are so full of players the coaching staff sits outside beside the dugout. After the third inning when most starters have left for the golf course you might feel like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid felt when they were being tracked all over the west. Every effort to fool the tracker failed and with each failure Butch would exclaim, “Who are those guys?” That is what Spring Training is like. Who are those guys wearing Pirate jerseys? However, it is wise to note some names because, one day, maybe even this year, some of those kids will appear in a major league game.

Wrapped around the games was a trip to an Antique place and another to a quilt shop. Oh yes, this is Pinellas County, so we spent some time at the beach. Clearwater is one of our favorite beaches. When we win the Publishers Clearing House prize we will purchase a place on Clearwater beach.

Our first night in town we discovered John’s Pass at Madeira Beach. Jane shopped and shopped, and we ate on the Boardwalk at Sculley’s Grille. WARNING Dieters: stop reading here! On Wednesday I was drawn like Odysseus to The Village Inn next to our hotel for ‘free pie Wednesday’. I ate the ‘pie’ in the picture after a cheeseburger, fries and strawberry shake. It’s okay, I walked back to the hotel!

Food is one of my siren calls, obviously. I’m not ready to tie myself to the ship’s mast to avoid eating free pie just yet. Are you wondering what the siren calls in your life might be?

Volusia County (The origin of the name is shrouded in fog like the fog in this photo.) is the home of Daytona Beach on the Atlantic coast of Central Florida. We have friends from our Air Force days who own a condo on Daytona Beach and I love hanging out at the beach. So last week I spent a very enjoyable day with Mike at his condo. To begin with you need to know that Mike and I are two wild and crazy guys (probably not).

I arrived in Daytona at lunch time, so we headed out for something to eat. The first place we targeted was out of business. It is probably good we didn’t eat there. Instead we stopped at a nearby ‘hole-in-the-wall’ place to satisfy our hunger.

Mike owns a Fitbit or something similar, so he proceeded to take me on a forced march down the beach to meet his daily steps goal. The beach was beautiful and surprisingly empty. Evidence of the hurricanes last fall were everywhere with ‘do not cross’ tape strung around shaky balconies and stairways. The beach is being refilled with sand and should be ready for the summer season. Following the ‘march’ we enjoyed sitting on the beach sipping adult beverages and enjoying each other’s company until it was time for supper.

We talked, as we did the entire time together, about many things. We talked politics-more guns will not reduce gun violence. We talked theology-the basic understanding is to hear the main theme of the scriptures which is living by laws doesn’t get us close to God, so God comes close to us. Spirituality is a corporate enterprise not an individual proposition. We are all connected to each other and to God (whatever name we use for the Eternal Being). We shared stories of our lives before we met in the early 90’s and military experiences unique to each of us.

Mike asked me if I had met anyone famous in my journey. I shared my moment with Drew Carey, which I thought was great. Well, it turns out Mike set me up. The famous person he met was Halle Berry. I am sooo! jealous!

That evening we had a fabulous diner at Anna’s Trattoria Italian on Seabreeze Blvd. I recommend the Penna alla Vodka. After dinner we walked around to savor the beach scene at night. While we lounged in his condo drinking adult beverages Mike noted that we had walked nine miles together. What are friends for! Really?

Somewhere in our conversation Mike shared that the Daytona 500 started as a race along the beach. The course started on the pavement of highway A1A (At 4511 South Atlantic Avenue a restaurant named “Racing’s North Turn” now stands at that location.) The course went south two miles (3.2 km) parallel to the ocean on A1A (S. Atlantic Ave) to the end of the road, where the drivers accessed the beach at the south turn on the Beach Street approach, returned two miles north on the sandy beach surface, and returned to A1A at the north turn. The lap length in early events was 3.2 miles (5.1 km), and it was lengthened to 4.2 miles (6.8 km) in the late 1940s.

The current race course doesn’t look anything like the original.

I returned home after lunch at Steve’s Famous Diner savoring the time shared by two wild and crazy guys (probably not) on the beach in February. Now, that is something very special.

Stories about our grandchildren are my favorite topics. Sharing stories about the adventures shared with our children and grandchildren are one of my greatest joys. I prefer to write the ‘fun’ stories related to the generation twice removed from mine. Writing about the quagmire that is our political reality is not my favorite topic.

After experiencing yet another mass shooting of children it behooves me to take on the quagmire once again. I must address the political morass because the inaction of Washington politicians has ended joyful adventures for the grandparents of seventeen young people here in Parkland, Florida.

We can throw around statistics like there are 89 guns for every 100 American and the second most guns are in Yemen where there are 54 guns for every 100 citizens (and they are in the middle of a civil war). The NRA and its minions are not listening.

We can talk until we are out of words about how Americans own 48% of the 650 million civilian guns worldwide.

The NRA and its minions don’t care.

We can argue that the US is 5% of the world’s population and accounts for 31% of mass shootings worldwide. The NRA and its disciples simply ignore the facts.

We can repeat the sad fact that there are more public mass shootings in America than in any other country in the world. The NRA and its adherents claim that is the price of freedom.

The NRA spends over 3 million dollars annually on lobbying in Washington DC. That figure does not include funds spent on local elections. There is no desire to stop the killing of our grandchildren only the desire to sell more weapons and ammunition.

I am not an anti-NRA person. Somewhere in my ‘stuff’ are two NRA certificates for completion of rifle and shotgun courses. My in-laws are all NRA members and own several guns used for hunting in the woods of Pennsylvania.

I am anti-stupid. Stupid is putting semi-automatic and automatic weapons in the hands of any civilian who has the money to purchase one. Stupid is claiming owning a military style weapon is a second amendment right. Stupid is claiming, again and again, that America somehow has more mentally ill people committing murder than other countries. Stupid is the claim that more guns will make US citizens safer. Really!

The one fact that cannot be argued, intelligently, is that the country with the most guns is the country with the most mass murders.

I have the privilege to share stories about my grandchildren because they have not been murdered by someone with a gun.

Too many grandparents no longer have that opportunity.

Here is the point. The second amendment was written to protect the right of an individual to own a gun that could be fired one time before it had to be reloaded. The founding fathers never intended the second amendment to be misused as a tool to sell military style weapons to civilians. It is well past time to remove military style weapons from the civilian population and make the sale of such weapons illegal.

Stories about our grandchildren are my favorite topic. Sharing stories about the adventures shared with our children and grandchildren are one of my greatest joys. I don’t want another grandparent to lose the opportunity to share adventures with their grandchildren.

The County Seat of Lee County (in southwest Florida on the Gulf Coast) is Fort Myers. The connection My Jane and I have with Ft Myers is our longtime friends Sterling and Mary Jane who winter here. (On Captiva) Our friendship began in the late 1970’s and has continued to survive despite My Jane and I moving around the United States and the world. After all these years we find ourselves, half the year, within a three-hour drive of each other (the closest we have been since 1986). We took advantage of the closeness by sharing a fun couple of days together exploring some of Florida near Sterling and Mary Jane’s ‘tindominum’ last week. My Jane and I stayed in a hotel in the largest city in Lee County, Cape Coral, which gave us the thrill of traveling over the bridge between Ft Myers and Cape Coral each day. What a view!

Sterling and Mary Jane took us to Sanibel and Captiva Islands for the day. Travel brochures claim you can not walk a step on the beach without indulging in the so-called “Sanibel Stoop” to search for shells. We did the Sanibel Stoop on Captiva collecting souvenirs for our oldest grandson. Enjoying the clean Gulf coast sand reminded me of my years on the west coast in 1970-71. In those days the sand was oily due to continual seepage from the multitude of oil platforms dotting the sky-line of the Pacific Ocean. I am glad we reduced off shore drilling so the beaches of our country could return to their natural beauty. I hope politicians do not decide to ever return to that destructive practice again. Surely, we are not that short-sighted!

Sanibel and Captiva formed as one island about 6,000 years ago. The first known humans in the area were the Calusa, who arrived about 2,500 years ago. The Calusa were a powerful Indian nation who came to dominate most of Southwest Florida through trade via their elaborate system of canals and waterways. Sanibel remained an important Calusa settlement until the collapse of their empire, soon after the arrival of the Europeans. (Sounds like other sad familiar stories from our history.)

In 1963 a causeway replaced the ferry between the islands and the mainland. The resulting population explosion caused the City of Sanibel to pass new restrictions on development after it was incorporated. Currently the only buildings on the island taller than two stories date before 1974, and there are no fast food or chain restaurants allowed on the island except a Dairy Queen (I don’t know how we missed this!) and a Subway (we ate lunch here), which were on the island before the laws were enacted.

We spent an enjoyable hour or so at Sanibel Historical Village. The buildings in the village were brought together to preserve the history of the island. The 1926 ‘Great Miami’ Hurricane plays a prominent role in the story of this village and its structures. The post office was built completely from materials gathered after the hurricane decimated the island.

Our afternoon was happily spent at the Ding Darling Wildlife Society-Visitor and Education Center and preserve. (The sign reads-Gopher Turtle crossing.) Darling was a conservationist cartoonist and as a member of FDR’s Committee on Wildlife Restoration established the duck stamps (even designing the first one.) I feel a special connection to Ding due to his attendance at Yankton College back in 1894. (No, I never met him on campus at Yankton. Really!)

We did the driving tour around the preserve and were lucky to come across about three hundred White Pelicans.

A White Pelican looks like the bird on the restroom door at the visitor center. It’s not every restroom that gives you an education on local birds. We also saw several Rosy Spoonbills.

We are already making plans for next year when we want to attend spring training games for the Red Sox and Twins.